


Crazy Random Happenstance

by 27dragons, tisfan



Series: Imagine Tony and Bucky 2018 [14]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Clumsy Tony, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony fails at life, nurturing Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-07 18:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15913854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky Barnes is trying to reintegrate into life, learn to take care of himself and others.Well, the plant's dead...





	Crazy Random Happenstance

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt: "Bucky's therapist tells him to set goals for himself, and after encountering a sleep deprived and injured Tony, he found it. Protecting and taking care of Tony Stark. Even if the genuis says he doesnt need help."

_1306 "Bucky's therapist tells him to set goals for himself, and after encountering a sleep deprived and injured Tony, he found it. Protecting and taking care of Tony Stark. Even if the genuis says he doesnt need help."_

The plant was dead.

Not even maybe salvageable. Dead. Most of the leaves were littering the potting soil and the few that remained were shrivelled and brown. Even the plant’s main stem looked like someone had mummified it. There was mildew in the soil. Well, at least that part of it was alive.

Bucky stared at the plant like he could possibly will it back to life.

Nothing happened. Which was probably for the best really.

He heaved a sigh, turned the plant over and dumped all its broken bits, useless, over-watered soil, and the little plant food stick that Tash had recommended, into the kitchen trash can. He considered throwing the pot in after it, but he could hear someone in the communal living room, and while Tony would have no qualms about disposing of a perfectly useful, not broken flower pot, Steve would give Bucky that look. It was the same look he used when snitching jelly packets at the deli, or ordering water with lemon when they ate out.

You could take Steve out of the Great Depression, but you couldn’t take the Depression out of Steve, apparently.

Bucky slumped back into the chair at the table, now staring at the empty flower pot. He wasn’t doing such a great job taking the depression out of himself, either.

How was he supposed to tell his therapist that he’d killed the project she assigned him. In less than a month, he’d killed a supposedly unkillable plant.

Great.

Winter Soldier. Black thumb gardener.

Bucky’d lived most of his life, up until he died, taking care of Steve. But Steve didn’t need to be looked after anymore.

Hydra had given him a purpose. It was twisted and warped, but it was something.

He still wasn’t cleared to be an Avenger. His therapist had to do that. She wasn’t going to do it if Bucky presented a dead succulent as evidence that he knew how to take care of things.

 _Fuck._  

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying,” came Tony’s voice, as he strolled into the kitchen, phone held to his ear. He tucked it between his shoulder and jaw and began trying to load the coffee machine. “The man is an idiot, I’m saying you should fire him and put that assistant of his in charge of the project. She’s-- I know she’s never done it before, but sometime has to be the first, right? ...Well, it worked great with you, Pep, so I don’t-- No. Yes, I know you’re the people person, but I’m telling you-- Just give it some thought, okay? The stockholders will only scream until they see what a great idea it is. Yeah. No, that’s next week. Okay. See you then.” He unshrugged his shoulder and let the phone clatter to the counter as he continued to make coffee.

“Morning, Comrade Snowflake,” he said to Bucky. “Coffee?” He flipped the switch on the coffee maker and turned around, facing Bucky directly. His eyes landed on the empty flower pot, and his head cocked quizically. “Air plant?”

“Used t’be a fascinating hawthorne, or somethin’ like that,” Bucky said. “But it’s so dead, I reckon its ancestors are goin’ extinct. Watch that--” Bucky jumped out of his chair and grabbed the coffee pot off the counter, jamming it in place under the drip before it overflowed watery grounds everywhere.

Tony blinked owlishly at Bucky’s sudden lunge, and then at the coffee pot. “...Huh. Yeah, that. That probably would have been a better place to put that.” He opened the cabinet over the coffee maker and stretched up on tiptoe, groping for a mug that was just out of his reach. He managed to hook a finger through the handle and drag it closer, just as what looked like a truly epic yawn forced its way out of his mouth. The mug teetered on the rim of the shelf and then fell off, shattering into dozens of pieces.

Bucky stared at Tony. “When was th’ last time you got sleep that didn’t come out of a cup?” He grabbed another mug  -- someone really should reorganize these, coffee mugs were the most commonly used item in the kitchen, they didn’t need to be on the top shelf -- and put it on the counter.

“ _Nyet_ , don’t do that,” he said, when Tony squatted down to pick up the broken shards of pottery. “Get a broom, or better yet, you stay there, an’ I’ll get a broom, afore you bring the whole building down around our ears.”

“Chill, Elsa, it’s just a mug. I think the building can handle it. I mean, it handled some broken walls and floors and stuff after that robot invasion, I’m pretty sure it can handle this. I built it, after all, and things I build tend to stay built.” He was rambling, which meant he was probably running on less than three hours of sleep. “But if you want to be on cleanup detail, far be it from me to get in your way.”

Bucky made a noncommittal sort of noise and went for the broom. Cleaning supplies -- which were barely touched, honestly -- hung in the side closet. Bucky did a quick check of the kitchen to make sure Tony wasn’t about to drop the stove on his head or something, then fetched a broom and dustpan. Seriously, he was out of Tony’s sight for less than thirty seconds when he heard a variety of swear words and another crash from the kitchen.

He darted back into the kitchen to find Tony on the floor in a puddle of coffee and another broken mug. One of the kitchen chairs was lying on its side. The coffee pot was on the counter instead of on the coffee machine’s hot plate, but at least it was still upright.

Tony lifted a hand and cursed again; there was a thumb-sized shard of mug embedded in his palm. Before Bucky could stop him, he pulled it out, and blood began pouring out of his hand. “Fuck.”

Bucky sighed, reconstructing the scene in his head. Apparently, being so offended at the idea that he might, Bucky didn’t know, _accident_ himself to death, Tony hadn’t noticed Bucky got a mug down for him, dragged the chair over, and was standing on it. How that ended up with Tony, chair and another smashed mug on the floor, Bucky wasn’t entirely sure. He pinched the bridge of his nose with the metal fingers.

He grabbed a clean dishtowel out of the rack. “Lemme see,” he said, squatting near Tony and holding out one hand.

“It’s just a cut,” Tony protested, but he held out his hand for Bucky to take. “I do worse than that every time I rebuild one of the car engines, or overhaul DUM-E’s struts.”

Bucky ignored the words, squeezing Tony’s wrist in one hand and blotting at the cut with the towel. It didn’t look deep enough, or long enough, to need stitches -- and Bucky had been, at one time, an expert on people who needed stitches. Steve had looked like Frankenstein’s monster most of their childhood. But, of course, Tony’s hands were filthy, fingers smeared with grease and God only knew what else.

Bucky had an absolute horror of infections; Steve got laid low with them all the time when he was a kid. “I’mma help you up, and we’re gonna wash this out, yeah?”

Tony pouted at him. “I don’t need help, I’m a fully-functioning adult with two working legs.” But he didn’t try to shake Bucky off when Bucky slipped an arm around his waist and lifted him to his feet.

“Yeah, an’ like five minutes ago, you was a fully-functioning adult with an uncut hand and two unbroke teacups. I shudder t’ think what you might do to your legs with th’ next five,” Bucky scolded. “World needs Iron Man, not Tony Stark with a broken leg.”

“I could _totally_ fight evil with a broken leg,” Tony said indignantly, apparently not even noticing as Bucky turned on the water and maneuvered Tony’s hand under it. “I actually might have, once. The armor makes a pretty decent cast, actually, if I lock up the joints.”

“Don’t even doubt it,” Bucky said. Because _of course_ Tony had engaged with the enemy while already wounded. He checked the cut again, then wrapped the dishtowel around it, pulling it tight for a makeshift bandage. He kept pressure on it for a few minutes, despite Tony’s flailing about in an attempt to get back to the coffee pot and coffee. “No. You don’t need any more caffeine. What you need’s _sleep_.”

“No, I’m fine,” Tony said, but another yawn rather ruined the effect. He pouted some more. “I can’t, I’m right in the middle of a thing. I just need some coffee and I’m good to go.”

Bucky recognized stubborn; he’d seen that sort of chin on Steve Rogers every damn day. “What sort of a thing?” he asked, hoping to distract Tony for a few minutes. Just a few. Please God, could he not break something, trip over something, or run into something for five. Minutes. Please. “Put pressure on that.”

Coffee. Fuck, this was such a bad idea. He poured the remainder of the coffee into the perfectly unbroken mug, stuffed the pot back onto the hot plate with about an inch left in the bottom. Someone -- Clint probably -- was going to be pissed about that, but oh well.

Tony started rambling about _charge retention_ and _output waveforms_ and all kinds of technical-sounding things that barely made any sense until Bucky managed to piece together that Tony was trying to create a phone battery that would last longer. The longer he talked, the more he waved his hands around, nearly smacking Bucky in the face with the end of the dishtowel several times.

Bucky managed to understand just enough of it to keep Tony talking. He cleaned up the mess on the floor, rinsed the coffee pot, got it set up to brew a new batch, because that was just nice, and made two sandwiches, all the while prodding Tony along with questions “-- is there some reason you can’t make the battery smaller? Fit more in th’ same space?” and “-- don’t think I’d thought about it that way,” and “-- so, a good shut down feature’d help some, from all them memory loggers? People ain’t need their solitaire game runnin’ in the background when they’re checkin’ google maps.

“Hey, roast turkey an’ avocado on gluten-free bread?”

“Yeah, but that’s a software fix and I’ve-- What?” Tony looked over at the counter where Bucky had spread out the sandwich supplies. “Not hun-- Well, maybe a little. Sure, that sounds great.”

“Well, it’s like a gas tank; can’t increase capacity, might as well lower th’ weight of the car, right?” Bucky commented. “Jus’ saying.” He found himself almost humming as Tony continued to brainstorm, mouth full of sandwich. There was something satisfying about getting Tony to slow down for a few minutes, eat, rest. Might be good to get him out of the coffee stained clothes, a shower, and some damn sleep, but Bucky would take what he could get-- except, just maybe…  For someone to claim not to be hungry, he was putting a dent in that sandwich. Tony’s eyelashes fluttered a few times as he chewed another bite.

“...so the real trick is...” Tony paused to yawn and take another bite. “..is...” He drifted into silence, eyelids drooping. “Uh.” He put the remains of the sandwich down -- no more than two bites left. “Think I might go catch a nap, actually,” he said, sleep-slurred. “Come back to it fresh.”

“Okay,” Bucky said, very softly, not wanting to draw attention to himself. “Come on, then, I’ll walk you up.” He hooked his arm around Tony’s waist, slung the uninjured hand over Bucky’s shoulders. Very gently, he pulled Tony to his feet and started toward the elevator. “I got ya, no worries.”

“You don’t gotta...” Tony waved his free hand around aimlessly, dishtowel flapping. “Could’a just fallen on th’ sofa.”

“Clint’ll be back from th’ range soon,” Bucky reasoned. “An’ he’ll want to watch _Dog Cops_. Come on, resident genius, bed.”

Tony literally fell asleep on his feet before the elevator made it down to their floor. He barely stirred when Bucky scooped him up, princess-style and bridal carried him up the elevator, and onto his floor. JARVIS opened the door for him, and Bucky made his way cautiously through the layout of Tony’s penthouse suite, where he’d never been before. Finally, a huge bed. He lay Tony down on it, removed shoes, stained tee, and belt, then rolled him up in the quilt like an engineering burrito.

Bucky looked at him for a long moment, amazed at how relaxed Tony looked when he was sleeping, all the worries dropping off his face. There was a smudge of motor oil on his cheek. Bucky rubbed it off with his thumb. “Get some sleep,” he said. “Everything’ll still be waiting for you in th’ morning.”

***

Tony woke up feeling warm and amazingly well-rested and the faint smell of coffee.

All in all, it was a pretty great way to wake up.

He wriggled his arms out of the blankets and stretched, then flinched when his hand hurt. He pried an eye open to look at it, and found a somewhat bloodstained dishtowel had been tied around it. He pried the towel off to look at the cut on his palm, clean and scabbed over.

He frowned at it. He didn’t remember cutting himself -- and then he did. He’d climbed up on the kitchen chair to get a mug, and then poured coffee into it without bothering to climb back down first, and as he’d started to take a drink, he’d overbalanced and tipped the chair over, and himself with it.

Embarrassing. Why did they even keep the coffee mugs on the top shelf?

Bucky had washed out the cut for him and wrapped it in the towel, and then... made him a sandwich? Was he remembering that right? And then... Tony couldn’t remember what had happened after that. He couldn’t even remember finishing the sandwich. And he’d meant to just take the coffee down to the workshop so he could finish that battery overhaul. Why was he in bed?

He struggled free of the blankets -- they were wrapped all the way around him -- and found that he was still wearing his pants, but had been divested of his shirt and shoes.

Which meant he hadn’t come back to his room on his own. If he’d been running on autopilot he would have just fallen face-first on top of the bed and passed out, not gotten half undressed and rolled up into the blankets.

“JARVIS? Did... Did the goddamn Winter goddamn Soldier put me to bed?”

“Indeed, sir,” JARVIS agreed.

“Show me.”

JARVIS obligingly popped up a holoscreen showing the slightly fisheye-distorted view from one of the security cameras of Bucky carrying a passed-out Tony into the penthouse like a goddamn princess.

“I must’ve been more tired than I thought. How long was I out?”

“Just over ten hours,” JARVIS said, sounding warmly approving.

“...Huh.”

Well, it was Avengers Tower. Weird things happened.

***

“Hey, Tony,” Bucky greeted him over the Tower’s comm system, “if you've got a minute, I'm havin’ a joint issue in the thumb? Can I come down when you're free?”

It wasn't entirely a lie. The thumb was sticking just a bit, but nothing really worth a full maintenance. Bucky could open the same thing himself and blow it out with a little compressed air. He personally hated doing it -- compressed air was cold -- but he could.

Not the point.

The point was he'd gotten street tacos from one of Tony's favorite food trucks and he was curious to see if Sam's trick worked on Tony as well as it worked on Steve.

“Watch this,” Sam had said, unwrapping a candy bar and setting it next to Steve's elbow during movie night.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, Steve had absently picked it up and ate it without even noticing.

“Milky Way principle,” Sam had called it. “Sooner or later, everyone eats the Milky Way.”

“Sure thing, Red Menace,” Tony agreed. “Whenever it suits, come on down. I’ll leave the door unlocked and the lights on.”

Bucky made his way down to Tony's shop, bag of tacos under one arm, drink holder in the other hand. JARVIS opened the door for him when he got down there. “I appreciate this,” Bucky said, putting the bag down. He unloaded the tacos onto Tony’s workbench, pushing the rare flank steak and lime cilantro ones toward Tony, chicken and black bean on his end. “Just a little sticky, here.” He rolled the joint, which made a dry, clicking sound as it moved, like dirt in gears. Probably exactly what it was, really.

“Sounds like you got some dirt in the gears,” Tony said. He kicked out a lab stool toward Bucky and turned on a desk lamp. “Bring it over here and let’s have a look.”

He took his time, carefully disabling the nerve-conduit receptors before prying open the small plates and starting to examine all the fine motors and servos. He pulled a magnifying glass over to look at the tiniest parts, and absently picked up one of the tacos, taking a bite and chewing as he reached for the can of compressed air.

At least it wasn’t as bad, when Tony did it. For reasons that probably made sense if you were Hydra and therefore, a fucking sadist, Bucky couldn’t disable the nerve-conduits himself. It still felt fucking weird, having air rushing inside part of his body. Psychosomatic, he told himself. All in your fucking head. “How’s the battery project goin’?” It bothered him, sometimes, that nobody else really seemed to listen to Tony. They cared that their gear worked, but not why, or how, or the amount of work that Tony put into it.

Bucky was the guy, when he discovered he was in the future, read the manual for the microwave. And then he’d taken it apart, to see how it all fit together. He had not, mind, been able to reassemble it into working condition. Thankfully, Tony hadn’t asked questions when Bucky told him it was broken, and could he expense a second one. Bucky’d mostly not taken that one apart.

_Mostly._

“Oh, I finished that,” Tony said easily. “I was able to come up with a new alloy for the conductive sheets that maintains signal integrity 143% better than the standard stuff, and the bump in cost is only about eight percent, so hopefully that will translate when we start production.” He glanced up with a grin, and there was a little bit of cilantro stuck to his front teeth. “Turns out you _can_ make the gas tank bigger, if you know what you’re doing.”

“Sounds good,” Bucky said. “So what are you working on today?” He took the drinks out of the carrier and sat one next to Tony. Italian soda, of the non-caffeinated variety. Tony probably wouldn’t notice, and the man ran on straight high octane way too often. “You’re always poking around down here, what do you do for _fun_?”

Tony jerked his thumb toward the cars at the back of the workshop. “That’s my fun project,” he said. “Soup those babies up and take them for a drive -- not that you can really open up in New York, but I’ve found some good back roads upstate.” He dug out a little whisk-looking brush and started cleaning out Bucky’s joint. “Not that I have much time for it, with everything. Today’s project is an armor upgrade for the team.”

Bucky hadn’t really looked at the cars, they had just been part of the background clutter, but wow, they were nice. “Huh,” Bucky said. “I ‘member your dad, tryin’ to build one that could fly. Didn’t, but for a few minutes it hovered and that was pretty nifty. You’ll hafta show me what all’s changed, but I used to work in a garage, back before the war. Used to have a ‘38 top-down Studebaker that I won off a punk, didn’t run worth a damn, but I was always tinkerin’ with it, thinking I could get it going, and have me a really sweet ride for dates, and that stuff. Don’t know whatever happened to it.”

“Yeah? I have a few older cars, but that was mostly my dad’s obsession. I tend toward the newer ones. Engines have changed a lot since then, but come down sometime and I’ll give you a tour.” He finished up the last of his tacos and picked up the soda without looking away from Bucky’s thumb.

Bucky smiled down at Tony, the dark head so intent on the mechanical arm. “Yeah, okay, it’s a date. How ‘bout I’ll bring lunch tomorrow an’ you can take a break then?”

‘Hm? Yeah, sure,” Tony said. He closed up the plates and reconnected the nerve conduits. “There, that should do the trick. Let me know if it starts acting up again.”

Bucky flexed his hand a few times, everything was in working order again. Nice. “Thanks, ‘preciate that,” he said, then, “oh, you got something on your cheek there.” He rubbed the metal along Tony’s face, catching a dollop of that lime aioli sauce.

“What?” Tony looked startled, but didn’t flinch away from the touch. “Oh, right, thanks.” He picked up the soda and took another long drink from it before looking at it with a slightly confused frown. “Did you bring this, is this yours?”

“No, this one’s mine,” Bucky said, pointing to the other drink. “That one’s yours. Don’t forget to wrap up early tonight, it’s movie night, an’ we’re s’posed to be watching some Alien? Aliens? Something like that. Thought you might wanna watch it with us. I ain’t never seen it.”

Tony’s face lit in a grin. “You’re in for a treat, Barnes,” he promised. “I won’t miss it. Save me some popcorn.”

Bucky left the shop, grinning like a fool. Two days of lunches, movie night, and maybe, maybe he’d be able to talk Tony into going outside and getting some damn sun on his skin so he didn’t turn into a mushroom. It was going well. He already looked better rested. Happier, too.

Mission, success.

***

Tony woke with a start. The last thing he remembered, Ripley had been warning the Alien queen away from Newt like the true badass that she was. He must have fallen asleep watching the movie.

His surroundings bore out that hypothesis: he was still in the living room, though it was dark and quiet now. There was a scatter of popcorn on the floor, a couple of beer bottles abandoned on the coffee table that suggested the marathon had continued after Cap had gone to bed, because Steve would’ve pestered everyone to clean up if he’d still been up.

Tony could already tell he had a crick in his neck; he was too old to be falling asleep sitting up and then slumping over in his sleep. He huffed out a sigh over not having been woken when everyone else packed it in (which was patently unfair; none of the Avengers woke each other up for anything other than an emergency, because all of them were toting around enough trauma that it was not only possible but likely that anyone rudely awakened would come out of it swinging).

Well, maybe he’d have to find an hour in his schedule -- somewhere -- to hire a masseuse to take care of his neck for him. He started to sit up--

\--and that was when he realized that he’d had his head pillowed on Bucky’s thigh.

Bucky was sitting in the corner of the couch, head tipped back in apparent sleep. His hand was loosely curled on the cushion next to Tony’s head, as if he’d fallen asleep in the middle of petting Tony’s hair or something.

Weird.

 _He_ probably wouldn’t wake up with a crick in his neck.

Tony sat the rest of the way up and tried, fruitlessly, to stretch out his shoulder muscles to relieve the tension.

“Oh,” Bucky said, softly, although why he was bothering to whisper when there was no one else in the room, Tony wasn’t sure. “Here, let me--” He flexed the metal hand a few times, ostentatiously, and Tony wasn’t sure why he was doing that either, except when his hand came down on Tony’s aching neck, it was pleasantly _warm_ , and the smooth pad of the thumb pushed in right on the sore spot, encouraging the muscle to relax.

“Oh, Jesus,” Tony half-moaned, feeling his muscles quiver and then melt under the steady pressure. “That’s good.”

“Huh, it’s a wonder you can walk straight,” Bucky murmured, prodding the muscle in Tony’s shoulder, working out a knot just to one side of his spine. “My Christ, your tension has tension.” He worked his thumbs down Tony’s shoulders, just shy of too hard, enough so that Tony went all limp, pushing back into it shameless as a cat while Bucky petted and prodded the stiff, aching muscles. “Oughta get you t’ lay down sometime.”

Normally, Tony would’ve answered that with a quip about Bucky trying to get him into bed, or even just a salacious grin and a waggle of the eyebrows, but Bucky was turning the hot steel rods in Tony’s back into putty-like muscle, and all Tony could do was moan in something like agreement. “Christ, that’s good. We should get you a massage therapy license and put you on staff.”

Bucky flexed his metal hand again. “Yeah, I don’t think that’ll work out so good. Normal people don’t really like me touchin’ em.” He hitched in a breath. “You don’t… seem to mind.”

“Why the hell would I mind?” Tony wondered. “That arm’s a miracle.”

Bucky probably shrugged, based on the way his hands moved on Tony’s back. “People don’t like it,” he said. “It’s, like, creepy or somethin’. Oh, wait, wait, there it is.” His fingers started easing another knot loose, like a kid untying their shoes. “Deep breath, let it out slow. This might sting a mite--” As Tony let the air out of his lungs, Bucky wrapped his flesh arm around Tony’s chest and pushed at his back with the heel of his hand. There was a popping sound like the last few kernels of corn in a microwavable bag, and everything seemed to unravel.

“Oh, _god_.” It hurt for a moment, a sharp flare of burn, and then he sagged in sudden relief, not even caring that he was making Bucky hold him up. “I think I’ll keep you,” he said, only half joking. He couldn’t _remember_ ever feeling this limp.

“Yeah, okay, sugar daddy,” Bucky said. “C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

“I don’t think I can move,” Tony said. “You melted me.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we? Iron Man’s not so impressive when he’s a puddle,” Bucky said. He stood up, stretched magnificently, back and shoulder crackling. “You need me to carry you again, princess?”

Tony snorted. “No, just... Help me up, would you?” He held up his hand. “I’m too old for this.”

“Pfft, you’re like half my age,” Bucky said. He linked his hand with Tony’s and hauled him off the sofa, gripping Tony’s shoulder with the other hand to keep him steady, which-- Tony looked right up into those dark grey eyes, and they were almost kissing close, Bucky’s breath puffed warm against Tony’s cheek. “Oh.” And Bucky didn’t move in, but he didn’t back off, either, just stood there, like a wild animal trapped by a set of high beams.

Huh. “Is, uh. Is this why you’ve been... I dunno, sort of taking care of me lately?” Tony wondered.

Sergeant Barnes, hero of the Howling Commandos, the Winter Soldier, feared assassin, made a tiny little squeaking noise, sounding for all the world like a kitten that had pounced on a bug. “Um… no? I mean, not… kinda… yeah, it’s… no. No. I been lookin’ after you ‘cause it seemed like you needed lookin’ after, an’... I need it. I mean, I’m just all at loose ends, ain’t nobody around here really needs me for anything, and I… need to be needed. Can’t take care of a damn houseplant to save my life, an’ I didn’t wanna get a cat, you know, I don’t even know if you let people have pets in this building, and… it just happened. And I was feelin’ better about me, and seemed like it was helping you, and…” He waved his hand briefly in the very narrow space between their bodies. “This just _happened_.”

Tony nodded thoughtfully. “I can work with that.” He swayed closer, watching as Bucky’s eyes widened and flicked down to Tony’s mouth. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Bucky agreed, a breathless whisper. He nudged in, nuzzled lightly at Tony’s mouth with lips that were full and plush, the upper lip twitched as he encountered Tony’s facial hair. Tenderly, Bucky slid his hand into Tony’s hair, metal fingers slipping through the locks and very lightly tugged at the short hairs at the back of Tony’s scalp. “Yes, Tony.”

Tony smirked a little, then leaned in to kiss Bucky more fully, licking past those sweet lips to tease at the corner of Bucky’s mouth, to try the taste of him. “Well, come on, then,” he said. “Let’s go tuck me into bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haworthiopsis_fasciata ← this is the plant. Tisfan has murdered at least four of these damn things.


End file.
